


Sith All Your Tempests Cannot Hold Me Back

by akathecentimetre



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: AU madness, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, M/M, Multi, ambassadors & journalists AU, posh disaster threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-04-23 15:43:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4882573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akathecentimetre/pseuds/akathecentimetre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In retrospect, sorting out their relationships is the easy part - it's when they get back to work that things get complicated. Modern AU involving ambassadors and journalists and cycling in and out of each other's lives, assignment by assignment and heart by heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

*

They first meet when they’re both in their early twenties; he’s just finished a master’s in journalism at Columbia, and she’s halfway in charge of an international conflict resolution thinktank, her first job out of school (during which she spent her summers working in three different embassies). He’s still vaguely Scottish, she’s very English indeed, and the morning after they meet he disappears. Two weeks later, his first byline for _The New York Times_ comes in from Kosovo, alongside photographs of mass graves and bombed-out churches.

Eighteen later, Satine Kryze stands in the Oval Office and finds herself daydreaming through the President’s welcome as she is formally designated as British Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United States. It all feels so anticlimactic, though she likes the President himself (he’s a good man doing what is, as ever, an impossible job), and by the time she’s halfway out of the White House her staff are already chattering their way through her first day’s schedule, the only part of which she cares about is an evening reception at the U.N., which is billed as cocktails and chat but is, as per usual, the sort of time and place where the real work gets done.

She almost doesn’t recognize him. Actually, she doesn’t at all, until someone points him out by name. The beard is new, and she’s not sure she likes it – as is the leather jacket, and the general air of someone consciously adopting a fashion not meant for him, but that suits extremely well.

“Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in.”

“I suppose I’m supposed to say something cutting and witty in reply, but I find myself convinced otherwise,” he says, looking her up and down. “Vera Wang?”

“You care?”

“I’m friends with several Style editors. They’d be impressed.”

“Are you?”

“Naturally.” Kenobi’s eyes are sparkling with mirth. “My congratulations, Your Excellency. A rapid rise indeed.”

“I could say the same of you. Which Pulitzer are you on, now?”

“Up for a third, if I’m not mistaken.”

The skinny black tie suits him. He looks battered around the edges, but on purpose. “Why are you here?”

“I was invited. Something about trying to get me to give up my sources for my latest piece on rape victims in the Congo.”

“And you don’t think it would be a good idea to pass on to the Congolese government – such as it is – the names of the perpetrators mentioned by those you interviewed?”

Oh, but he’s good. He hadn’t had this look when they’d first met – it’s so very, very easy to see the shroud drop down, the thousand-yard stare which warns anyone in the vicinity that he’s seen things, and knows things, and is firmly in control of anything he damn well pleases.

Satine’s got the knack, too. You learn a trick or two when being a female ambassador to Saudi Arabia for three years, after all.

Kenobi takes a sip of his champagne, a dry smirk on his lips. “The women I talked to would be slaughtered one by one.”

“And you don’t think they won’t be anyway?”

“Protecting them is your government’s job. I just dig up your dirty secrets.”

“Mm,” Satine says, nodding sagely. “And you’re very good at it.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Too good, perhaps.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Satine looks around her. The General Secretary has left the room, surrounded by his people; the steady flow of congratulations in her direction has tailed off. It’s been a long day, and she’s tired, and maybe it’s not worth having this fight.

But Kenobi still owes her an explanation for a kiss, eighteen years gone, and she’ll be damned if she isn’t an Ambassador Extraordinary who’s come to New York unattached and more than willing to enjoy her moment.

“Nothing,” she sighs, stretching slightly in her dress. Kenobi’s eyes take the exact track she’d expected and wanted. “Just to say that if you were a little less bent on exposing just where UK-made weapons end up – which, by the way, in many cases is completely beyond the control of the seller – we, that is, my government, which also happens to be _your_ government… might have been able to be more helpful about that spot of bother in Eritrea.”

“Hm.” Kenobi raises a slow eyebrow at her, takes a step closer. “The spot of bother where I was in a godforsaken hellhole of a prison for a month and came out looking like Jack the Pumpkin King?”

Satine puts down her glass on the tray offered by a nearby caterer. “Walk with me.”

He’s got more pieces to his ensemble in the foyer – a messenger bag, three cellphones that he checks briefly before tucking them away into his jacket. “Where are you living – at the Embassy?”

“Financial District.” Her car and driver are waiting for her at the door; she turns back, knows that the beams of floodlights are illuminating her up in flames of gold and silver, the dress satisfyingly heavy on her shoulders. “Are you coming, or aren’t you?”

Kenobi looks at her, his hands in his pockets, and just smiles. “For old time’s sake?”

“You owe me.”

“Goodness,” he says as he slips into the backseat beside her. “You do hold grudges.”

“I’m a politician.” Satine puts a hand on his thigh, settles back into pristine black leather at both her back and, now, her shoulder. “I know how to get what I want.”

Something brushes down the cheek – the backs of his fingers, which then tangle briefly in her hair, tuck a ringlet of it back behind her ear. He’s looking at her as he would someone he’s interviewing or the map of a warzone, examining every line and curve. She’s forty, and beautiful, and she knows it, too.

“Who would have thought,” he murmurs.

He has his little routine once they reach her apartment, which she had expected; it’s quite similar to the one her bodyguards go through whenever she enters or exits a room, puttering quietly around the perimeter, pausing to take in the magnificent view across the City from the sky-high windows. He shoves his bag under her coffee table; he checks the phones once more while she’s unbuttoning her jacket and saying goodnight to the agents who will stand guard in shifts outside her door. When she’s finally closed and locked it and taken off her coat, Kenobi seems content to just keep standing there, looking at her approaching in the half-light.

Satine stops in front of him, folds her arms. “Eighteen years ago, at the conflict resolution forum, you kissed me.”

“Yes.”

“We were both a little drunk, and stupidly young, and we sneaked off into a classroom at Columbia and you kissed me. And then you left.”

“I’m fairly sure you were an equal participant, darling,” he drawls. “Or perhaps even the instigator, because I’m the journalist, here, and I remember it quite differently.”

“You think I’m lying?”

Kenobi leans forward into her space, grinning. He always did know how to look positively wicked. “You said it yourself, my dear,” he says. “You’re a politician.”

“Are you going to kiss me now?”

“I don’t think it makes much of a difference what I do. The story, as we say, will be spun your way.”

Satine tilts her head. Considers. “All right,” she says.

She puts her arms around his neck, presses closer into him, kisses him, long and slow, and decides she can put up with the beard after all. He’s not shy, running his hands straight up her sides until he can take the back of her neck in one and snake the other arm firmly around her waist.

She remembers him as a cheeky bastard, and so it proves, as he pulls away slightly, a flush rising into his cheeks, and frowns sarcastically off over her shoulder. “So, hang on,” he says, as she slides one leg in between his. “You mean that if I’d just agreed to stop reporting quite so efficiently on potential war crimes committed by Her Majesty’s Government, I’d have been doing this a year ago instead of starving to death in a dictator’s jail?”

“Something like that,” she murmurs; he’s got his hands on her backside, now, and his neck smells of early summer sweat.

“Damn,” he sighs. “If only I’d thought of that…”

“Are you going to stop talking?”

“I’ll have to be persuaded.”

Satine shoves him down into an armchair, gets the jacket off of his shoulders, straddles him and rolls her hips forward until, with a surge, he clutches her close, hands hitching up fabric and sliding along her thighs.

“Come on, Ambassador,” he says, grinning up at her. “Argue with me.”

“Do you know what Plenipotentiary even means?”

“Curiously, I do. But I’d like to hear you say it.”

Courtesy and protocol be damned, she has enough of those in her life, either real or abstract; Satine shoves open his waistband, makes him hiss.

She puts her mouth on his ear. “It means I am endowed by the leader of the free world with ‘full powers,’” she whispers. “Would you like to find out what that means for you, old friend?”

“Fuck,” he grits out, and his grip on her hips becomes painful; she shudders and digs her hands into his hair as she inches him inside her before she gasps out her calm and decides to hold onto the back of the chair instead. God – she doesn’t do this. She never does this, it’s been a hell of a long time. But it’s been a long, long day, and it feels fucking fantastic, and for some reason there’s no one else on earth she’d trust herself to do this with right now.

Oddly, the moment she realizes this – when she’s not too distracted by the effort of keeping herself moving in just the rhythm she likes, and reveling in the fact that neither of them are much inclined to be quiet for the sake of her protection – is when he’s so very considerate about reaching around her to unzip her dress do he doesn’t rip it when he shoves it off her shoulders, away from her breasts, which, panting, he pays such determined attention to. His hands are sandblasted and calloused, too used to spending twelve hours a day writing, but they feel good on her skin, in her hair, which he firmly tangles into a total mess as he whispers gentle, filthy encouragement into her ear.

Satine feels unmoored. She knows he does, too; particularly when, after she’s screamed out her orgasm into his shoulder and let him wrap her up so they’re completely entwined for the last few thrusts he needs (which make her vision go white), he can’t quite open his eyes again; his lashes just flutter as he tries, until he gives up and puts his nose into her cheek, one hand stroking tortuously up and down her bared back.

It can’t be comfortable for him, sprawled halfway towards the floor as he is, so she gets up, totters; waits for him to haul himself back upright, and then, letting the folds of her dress fall back floorward, she sits across him, plays idly with the loosened knot of his tie.

Kenobi presses light kisses to her forehead, her cheeks, her neck. “Is this going to become a thing?” he murmurs.

“Do you have any objections?”

“I’m not always here.”

“Neither am I.”

“And you have a staff to think of – secrets to keep.”

“I trust my people. They’ve been with me through far worse than your ugly, hairy face. Shall we agree – no shop talk?”

“Deal,” he says with a slow nod, and then he smiles. “Pinch me when it’s time to wake up.”

Satine slaps lightly at his chest. “Flatterer.”

“I’m not in the habit of exaggerating, Your Excellency,” he says softly. “Never have been.”

She pulls back from him slightly, carefully drinks him in. “And I’m not just a Vera Wang dress,” she whispers back.

“I’d never be so stupid as to think that of you, my dear.”

“Remember it.”

“I will.”

Satine puts her head into the crook of his neck, and tells herself that this – this could be something good. And that, just for a start, the sleep she’s going to get tonight might be the most peaceful she’ll get in the next four years.

She dreams of ruined cities, and the blinding lights of flashing cameras.

*

**TBC**

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spenser's _Amoretti_ , Sonnet 46:
> 
> WHen my abodes prefixed time is spent,  
> My cruell fayre streight bids me wend my way:  
> but then fro[m] heauen most hideous stormes are sent  
> as willing me against her will to stay.  
> Whom then shall I or heauen or her obay,  
> the heauens know best what is the best for me:  
> but as she will, whose will my life doth sway,  
> my lower heauen, so it perforce must bee.  
> But ye high heuens, that all this sorowe see,  
> sith all your tempests cannot hold me backe:  
> aswage your stormes, or else both you and she,  
> will both together me too sorely wrack.  
> Enough it is for one man to sustaine,  
> the stormes, which she alone on me doth raine.


	2. Chapter 2

*

The first three months of her posting go better than Satine could ever have expected. She works back channels to help further negotiations on a trade dispute between America and New Zealand; she lends a hand to crisis talks surrounding a brief embassy hostage situation in Lebanon. She is mentioned in a West Coast paper as surprisingly attractive and fashion-conscious for a diplomat. She is offered three honorary degrees, and accepts two of them.

She arranges a pass for Kenobi so that he’s cleared to go to and from her flat at will, which never fails to amuse him. Putting on a disgraceful American accent, he refers to it as his booty call card – it’s a deliberate provocation, one which she takes revenge for with a long, long night in her bed during which he’s not allowed to use his hands.

“It’s just me,” he calls one night, as he’s coming in late, folders stuffed under his arm, and she’s half-drowsing over security memos on her sofa. “Your bit of rough reporting for duty, ma’am.”

She frowns, takes off her reading glasses and watches him puttering around her open kitchen. “Is that what you think you are?”

“Absolutely,” he says cheerfully as he brings her a glass of wine. “And I should make it clear that I have no problem with that,” he adds, softer, leaning down to kiss her hello properly.

She also, during two weeks when Kenobi is on assignment in Myanmar, realizes that, against all odds, she – Her Majesty’s Ambassador – has made friends. Real friends, who aren’t just people in high places: she likes her staff, which is an eclectic mix of old political allies, middle-aged technical experts, and hungry, overawed young teenaged interns whom she treats to lunch at every opportunity. She likes her solid, cockney-accented drivers, who tell her about the football scores at home. The Congressmen from the House and Senate Committees on Foreign Relations who approach her seem to do so out of good faith, and start her down several avenues of enquiry into policy changes that she feels she would be comfortable throwing her considerable weight behind.

Perhaps most surprising is that she has a friend in another ambassador, and that he is one she would quite like to keep even once her term is up. He is on his second tour as the French ambassador to the United States in as many decades, a member of an ancient and well-moneyed aristocratic family whose taste is impeccable and appetite for good living insatiable; his connections go wide and deep.

Bail Organa is, in other words, not a man to be underestimated. Satine meets him at the White House in her third week on the job; by the end of the day, they have exchanged personal phone numbers. The next morning, she wanders, yawning, in her bathrobe out to her door to discover that she has received a gift – an entire case of Taittinger champagne, sitting quietly on her kitchen counter.

“A less permissive soul than I might find ways to accuse you of bribery, you know,” she says to him a few months later, when they are progressing, statemanlike, around the edges of a function held in his honor at the Consulate of Algeria. “You’re making my protocol officer tear his hair out.”

“How sad for him,” Bail says, with a rich laugh. He is in his typical Armani, dapper and easy with his manners, a creature of a time when politics was rich with dark wooden rooms and cigar-smoke. It’s easy to forget, just from looking at him, that he is far and away the most successful anti-nuclear proliferation activist in the world. “Does that mean I need to stop spoiling you?”

“Good lord, no. How would I eat, otherwise?”

“That’s what I thought.” His shudder is perfectly feigned. “I do hope they’re not forcing you to eat _English_ food.”

“Hedonist.”

“Barbarian.”

“Guilty,” she shrugs, and his smirk tells her, suddenly, that he wants to ask a question. “What is it?”

Bail takes a moment to draw her to one side, ostensibly to look out of one of the Consulate’s wide windows over a bustling 47th Street. “You know what you are doing, Satine?” he asks, not unkindly. “It is rare for one of our breed to come into our jobs unattached, and gossip spreads fast and far.”

She wants to bristle, but knows that appearances must be upheld. “Is there a problem?”

“Not at all. You know how much I admire you. And him, as it happens. Based on his work, it would be difficult to find a more conscientious member of _le quatrième état._ ”

“And so?”

Bail puts a hand on her arm, and his eyes turn serious. “I am sure I do not need to tell you, _chérie_ , that there are others less respectful than I,” he murmurs. “You take precautions?”

“Yes.”

“You trust him? You trust your people?”

“I do.”

“ _Bien_.” As though a switch has been pressed, Organa’s expression is easy again, and even contains a hint of mischief. “Then you must introduce me to the man. To have captured the favor of one such as yourself, he must be impressive indeed.”

As they are leaving the function, something occurs to Satine that would probably seem outlandish in the harsh light of day – but it’s midnight, and she’s had quite a few glasses of Alicante, and so when she slips her hand through Bail’s elbow on the sidewalk she finds it easy to ask the questions she would never have thought of before.

“Ambassador,” she murmurs, “what exactly is the nature of your own attachment to Madame Organa?”

He turns to her with eyebrows raised, but with no visible offense taken. “It is quite extraordinarily complex,” he says. “And no one else’s business.”

“Why were you asking about him?”

“Do you trust me, Madame Satine?”

Satine looks up at him, reminding herself of just what she is asking. “Yes.”

“Then you must believe me when I tell you,” Bail says, leaning in close, for all the world like they’re sharing a state secret, “that the state of my marriage has no bearing whatsoever on the fact that I find you beautiful, and your paramour fascinating. And that I would like to see you again, very soon.”

He kisses her knuckles and hands her off to her driver, and Satine stares sleeplessly at the New York skyline all night.

Kenobi gets back from Myanmar in the middle of a business day, and texts her to say he is going back to his own apartment in Harlem to start sleeping off his jetlag. Satine stares at the message in between budget and security briefings, and then turns to her assistant, tells him to arrange for an extra ticket to the opera gala she is due to attend at Lincoln Center that evening.

 _Still want to meet him?_ she texts to Bail.

 _Où et quand?_ he texts back, and the date is set.

Kenobi arrives late, having refused the embassy car sent for him (Don’t open yourself up to accusations, Satine, he’d said once, gently scolding, his hand on her cheek. Not for my sake, he’d said), so he finds them on the balcony during the first interval, at ease in slacks and a button-down under the ubiquitous leather.

“Ben,” she calls, and he turns and smiles, and beside her, Organa makes a most appreciative noise.

“ _Très bien fait, chérie,_ ” he whispers to her. “Very, very well done.”

Kenobi’s little bow of respect over Organa’s hand has both ambassadors in a positive state before a word has been spoken. Satine feels herself being carried along on some sort of tide whose beginning she cannot trace – what is she doing? What _is_ she doing? Had she imagined that her status would lead her into anything of this strangeness?

Well, in fact – yes. Yes, she has thought that very thing, and now that it is happening it feels natural, which she decides must be a good sign. It feels natural for the three of them to talk of international relief efforts for Rohingi in Myanmar in hushed whispers all through the second act; it feels natural for the French ambassador, grown suddenly tired of the opera, to suggest during the second of three intervals that they should escape to his residence. It is completely natural that Bail’s home is as opulent and storied as his person, set on a quiet, gorgeous side of Gramercy Square Park, and that once he dismisses his staff for the night he is capable of sabering their champagne himself.

Ben puts a hand on the small of Satine’s back as they are led into a drawing room decorated with fine Lyon silks, oil portraits and marble, and leans into her ear. “What’s going on?” he murmurs, not unpleasantly.

“Many things,” she whispers back, and takes his hand.

Two hours later, they have run out of things to say about Myanmar for the time being, and Ben is between the two of them on the largest sofa in the place – a magnificent piece which was apparently brought to the colonies by Lafayette – and looking carefully back and forth from Satine to Bail as though slowly working something out.

“He suspects we are conspiring, _chérie_ ,” Bail says, and reaches across to refill Satine’s glass. “Have you not told him?”

“I have made overtures, Ambassador,” Satine replies, settling onto Ben’s shoulder with a sigh. “Worked the back channels, as it were.”

“Indeed?” Bail says, his eyes dancing with mirth.

Kenobi starts giggling, one hand coming up to rub at his beard. “Well,” he says finally. If Satine weren’t still distantly anxious as to what he will say, she would swear he is flattered enough to be blushing. “This is a turn-up for a boy from a housing estate in Edinburgh.”

Bail puts a hand on Ben’s knee, and Ben himself looks at her. “Satine?” he asks, quietly.

Her answer is to lean in and kiss him thoroughly, and a low groan starts to build in his throat as Bail’s hand finds its way further up his leg.

There is rather more arranging to be done than Satine had expected – but when you have a king-sized four-poster bed in which to do said arranging, many things become possible. Bail works slowly and methodically, subjecting both of them to such treatment that Satine loses track of time. It is his turn, after all, to learn them both, and he is the perfect support to lie back against, her breasts in his hands, while he watches Kenobi’s mouth on her. He is bigger and heavier than Kenobi, and so finds it easy to manhandle him (something she is surprised to find she enjoys watching very much), and when Kenobi’s eyes go wide and he reaches out for her at the touch of long fingers inside him, she leans over him, swallows up his moans as she feels Organa fucking right through both of them.

It is four a.m., and they have only been half-asleep for two hours, all tangled and wrapped up around each other, when Kenobi stirs and slowly extracts himself, bending over to gather his scattered clothes from the floor.

“I have a deadline,” he whispers in response to Satine’s low whine of protest. He bends down to her in the dark, kisses her, tasting of stale champagne – and then he kisses Bail too, turns his face into the sleepy hand that touches his cheek, kisses a broad palm.

“Until next time,” he grins, and is gone.

*

**TBC**

*


	3. Chapter 3

*

Satine has never been one to decorate much. Over the years, she has found herself liking the professional sterility of the anonymous apartments and hotels provided for her by governments all over the world; if she has ever stayed in one place for more than a year, she finds that her abodes will feel like a home with only the slightest, careful additions. Colorful notepads, a patterned pillow, a single painting which means something – these are all the sources of comfort she will need. Her New York apartment is no exception. It is high-rise, executive, full of white and black and chrome and sharp edges. And, as ever, it only takes a touch to make it worth coming home to.

When said touch is a copper-haired war correspondent or a six-foot, worldly diplomat, she couldn’t care less what the flat actually looks like. It only matters that her couch is big enough for three; that her carpet is soft enough not to leave burns; that the counter of her wide kitchen island is at just the right height to be bent over it at the waist; that the bedroom is far enough from the kitchen table that one of them can go out to work in the middle of the night or very early in the morning and leave the others sleeping; that that same person can, if they wish, look back over their shoulder at the other two and watch their fill.

She and Bail decide quite early on, with the fellowship born of long similar experience and temperament, that they will take charge of Kenobi – and, as it turns out, he has no objection to this whatsoever. His touches are haphazardly reverent as he gives himself up to them; buried inside Satine in her bed, with Bail’s slow, easy thrusts pushing him deeper into her, he loses the power of speech.

Organa’s home, like his Embassy, hides unanticipated delights behind every door. There are many stereotypes in the world, Satine knows, which turn out to have their basis in truth – the French love of pleasure, she is happy to find, is one of them, and Bail has perfected the art.

“He’s got a bloody _sauna_ in here,” comes a nettled call, one evening, when she and Bail are working over reports at opposite edges of his wide, magnificent desk. When Kenobi comes padding in to them, sweat-slicked and with only a towel around his waist, Bail puts down his pen and just smirks.

“Fucking _sauna_ ,” Kenobi grumbles on his way past. “Do you want me like this, Organa?” he continues, not breaking stride, “Or in the shower?”

“Shower, _mon cher_ ,” Bail calls back, picking up one more memo and flicking through to the index. “As much as I appreciate the view…”

Satine stays at her work, needing to prepare for a session with trade delegates from the WTO the next morning, as the soundtrack to which she is treated provides all she requires for that particular evening. It turns out that when Kenobi swears at a full shout, he sounds more Scottish than at any other time. He also – judging by Bail’s laughter – has an absolutely _terrible_ accent in French.

They only go to Ben’s apartment once. It’s a loft in Spanish Harlem, in an area which has yet to be tarred with the brush of gentrification; the stairwell is dingy and their respective bodyguards are quietly anxious as they wait outside, but inside he’s done a damn good job. Exposed brick and plaster mingle together in patterns not understandable by man; the hardwood floors are pristine, the kitchen adequate but with the only well-used appliance being the kettle; an old Persian carpet spreads out before a defunct fireplace. Books tumble off of every surface – dog-eared paperbacks, mostly, the pride of place held by classics like _The Death of a President_ , Evelyn Waugh, Waterhouse, _Fear and Loathing_ , stacks and stacks of _Private Eye_ , Nellie Bly, Capote, Bernstein, Woodward.

Satine couldn’t live here. But she does love it, and she loves that Kenobi seems to have a tendency to bustle and caretake when he’s in his own space – right down to making sure he makes both of them come first in the double bed he keeps on the overhang above his precious library before he lets them bear him down between them.

He’s made them tea in the morning by the time they come down the iron-wrought stairs, and is sitting over his laptop at his long, low table, surrounded by photographs of Russian-made ICBMs being trundled down some rural road.

“Satine,” he calls, and to her surprise he looks worried, in the dawn light, as they look back at him from the door. “Representative Merrick, from House Foreign Affairs?”

“What about him?”

“I don’t – ” Ben runs a hand through his hair, huffs, frowns down at his screen. “I don’t have corroboration I’m comfortable with yet, alright? But be careful around him.”

The _Wall Street Journal_ breaks the scandal two weeks later. The idea that an American congressman has been instrumental in facilitating the shipment of arms to separatist forces in Mali consumes the news cycle for a month, and will require hearings and trials for years to come. And it’s only because Satine takes Ben’s advice seriously, and withdraws as far as she dares from interacting with the Committee in those two weeks – with Bail’s support, because he does the same – that she is not dragged into it, too.

“I’m sorry,” Ben says after the story comes out, when she’s tracing his features in the dark with her fingertips. “We did say no shop talk, but – ”

“Hush,” she whispers, and kisses him, draws his hands into her hair.

She thinks she might love them both, and she doesn’t understand how, or what it means.

*

**TBC**

*


	4. Chapter 4

*

Satine loves watching Bail and Ben.

Sometimes, it’s for her own sake; mostly, it’s for theirs. They’re beautiful together, whether in the elegance of their presence at an Embassy on the rare occasions when Bail persuades Ben into a suit and onto the stage to be praised for the sort of journalism which does its crucial part in furthering world peace, or in private, lounging together, snarking over a meal or simply sitting and working in silence in the morning over coffee, wearing their respective silks or plaids, picking up each other’s pairs of reading glasses by mistake because their prescriptions are a near-perfect match.

She loves the strain of Ben’s wrists and clenched fists under her hands as Bail’s fucking him, leaning down to kiss him so he can press his moans into the side of her neck. “Beautiful, isn’t she?” Bail will ask from behind him, and Ben will pant out his assent, cup her face with exhausted, trembling hands.

Bail is affectionate, hardly ever passing by them in any circumstance without a hand on their shoulders, their neck, a pat on the knee before he stands. Ben waits for them to come to him, and then clings, wrapping himself into them, rocking on top of Bail with muscles clenching in his arms and back as Satine forces a hand between them.

It’s in watching them that Satine notices that Ben wants to leave. Not them – she’s past the stage of thinking that possible, even as she realizes that thinking _that_ means she’s in too deep – but he wants an assignment that takes him abroad, and he wants it soon. It’s not as if the world has recently proven bereft of wars; when he’s not with them and not writing up notes, he’s on one of his many phones constantly during working hours and often far into the night, putting together pieces. But he’s not _there_ , and Satine can see how it eats at him every time he writes about tensions in Sri Lanka, but isn’t in Colombo – every time he writes about Mali, but isn’t in Bamako.

In watching Bail and Ben, she arrives at Bail’s house one evening to find them in the middle of a heated, muffled argument in French – Bail is standing, Ben sitting with papers arranged around him, and neither seems to notice that she’s there.

“Non,” Bail is whispering, his hands taut and moving quickly. “Non, tu n’y iras pas.”

“C’est pas à toi de ce dire –”

“ _Si!_ ” Bail says, and then he has a palm on Ben’s collarbone, clearly urging restraint. “Si, c’est à _nous_ de le dire.”

Ben shakes his head, turning back to his papers, and Satine walks away.

A week later, she and Ben are alone in her flat when, coming into the kitchen with the last of her paperwork signed at 11 p.m., she sits at the counter with a glass of water to find a neat stack of documents within her reach. She picks them up, leafs through them; there are travel itineraries, boarding passes, lists of phone numbers with Turkish area codes attached to anonymous initials.

“Ben,” she calls casually, willing her hands not to shake. “Why do you have two tickets to Ankara, and who’s Ahsoka Tano?”

His answer comes instantly, just as calm. “Because that’s the closest major airport to the access point I’ll be using to get into Syria, and she’s the photographer who’ll be going with me.”

Satine explodes up out of her chair. She can’t ever remember being this angry, so much so that she feels dizzy with it. “How fucking _dare_ you?”

Ben’s giving her the Look. He’s just sitting there at her table with his maps and notes spread out around him, and he’s got that Look which tells her that his mind’s made up, and that there’s absolutely nothing she can do about it – in fact, that she’s in the wrong for even questioning it. She fucking _hates_ it.

“I need to get in there,” he says shortly, and looks away from her, quickly typing half a sentence just as she stomps to his side. “They’ve been without proper reporting for months. The world is forgetting, and the West needs proof of the use of chemical weapons, to say nothing of keeping up with IS’s campaigns.”

“They’ve got satellite footage! They’ve got scientific tests! They’ve got fucking Twitter, for god’s sake!”

“And you think that in a decade’s time tweets will be admissible evidence at the International Criminal Court, do you?”

Satine grabs his chin, twists him sharply towards her. “This document says that this Tano girl is twenty years old.”

“Yes.”

“Jesus Christ, Kenobi!”

“Don’t _you_ dare,” he says, danger in his low voice, one of his hands strong around her wrist. “She won prizes for her work in Libya when she was seventeen.”

“You’re taking a twenty-year-old girl into a chaos where rape is a casual tool of war,” Satine says – her voice is shaking now, she can barely force out the words. “To say nothing of what they’d do to you if – ”

“Satine.”

The Look tells her that he’s an adult, and so is she, and that this is just what they do.

“Come back,” she says miserably.

His smile is tired, wary. “I’m not sure that’s up to you, Ambassador.”

“Of course it is,” she sighs, and sits down in a chair next to him like a marionette that has had its strings cut. “I’m plenipotentiary, remember?”

“Yes,” he says quietly.

When he gets up the next morning, his wardrobe is entirely new and alien. He packs half a dozen keffiyehs, a sweater, and a cheap pair of sunglasses in his duffel; the tools of his trade, the computer, the hard drives, the portable, modified army-issue wifi router, the tape recorder, take up much of what is left. He wears a t-shirt under his button-down, cargo trousers, a pair of heavy combat boots that have clearly seen years of use.

“This is for Bail,” he says, sliding a sealed envelope across the table to her, where she is sitting hunched over her cooling coffee. “He didn’t want to see me.”

“I can’t imagine why,” she says, and instantly regrets it even though she doesn’t see his reaction.

“It’s unclear how long it will take us to get over the northern border,” he says, after a pause. “As long as we’re in Turkey, I’ll be in touch.”

“Do,” she mumbles.

He bends down, kisses her temple; still, she dares not look up. After the door closes behind him, she sits in silence for half an hour before she can summon up the energy to call her office and tell them she’s taking her first sick day in fifteen years.

*

**TBC**

*


	5. Chapter 5

*

After that first day, the rest of the first week is easier.

She receives short, inscrutable texts for three days; after that, there is only silence. But there is news of another kind, from quite another source – five days after Ben’s departure, _The New York Times_ begins a new investigative series called ‘Dispatches from Syria’ which sparks furious debate in editorial pages about the wisdom of a major newspaper allowing the publication of huge stories under the byline of ‘Anonymous’ rather than allowing their embedded reporter the luxury of time to return from a dangerous combat zone.

Satine knows Ben’s right, though. It doesn’t matter whether his name is attached to it or not (they will figure it out eventually, of course – it’s hardly difficult, but she won’t allow herself to think on that for too long), because this is important. He’s providing some of the first front-page news of frontline fighting in Damascus for nearly a year, and has put the thumbscrews back on the regime, and that’s enough. The accompanying photographs of bare hospital shelves and bombed-out wards are grim, perfectly-lit, shockingly stark. Whoever this Ahsoka Tano is, she’s very good indeed.

Bail invites her to his home on the second night, and after that, he invites her to stay there for the duration. She doesn’t end up having much choice in the matter, in fact – he’s gotten to know her staff just as well as Ben has, and it’s easy for him to cajole one of them into raiding her closet and bringing her neatly-pressed suits and dresses to them. In truth, she’s glad of it, and says as much; she can’t bear, for some reason, the fact of being up so high in her skyscraper. She can’t bear the sight of so many lights, so many people, so much life from her flat’s windows.

“I visited Chernobyl several years ago,” Bail says one evening, seemingly apropos of nothing, as they are sitting over his very French dinner (he keeps a private chef, and given how such food makes Satine feel it’s a wonder Bail keeps any sort of svelte figure). “I will never forget it. There are still household items lying scattered in people’s homes. Schoolbooks lying open in the classrooms.”

Satine slowly turns her wineglass in her hand. “The weapons they’re using don’t give off long-term radiation.”

“No,” Bail sighs. He reaches over to grab her other hand. “But the devastation they leave in their wake is the same. His work is necessary, _chérie_. We can only applaud it.”

She swallows around something rough in her throat. “I thought you were angry with him.”

“I am – for my own sake. You are trying to be selfless, I think,” Bail replies thoughtfully, and when she looks up sharply she sees that he is trying to be kind. “Will you allow me to take care of you?”

Satine nods, and does. Bail is nothing if not generous, and he whispers little nonsenses of love which can or cannot mean anything depending on how she chooses to take them. He takes her shopping, a luxury she had never thought to spend any time on, and lavishes his family’s old money on her; he strokes her back in silence long into the night until she falls asleep.

By the second week, she feels recovered enough to remember that he needs her, too, and she wakes him with long, lingering kisses to his abdomen, hushes him when he groans and, eyes closed, twitches up into her touch.

“Satine,” he says, voice still hoarse with sleep. “Tu ne dois pas – ”

“Si,” she soothes, and moves lower.

They read the morning papers together, holding hands. Anonymous has published his third article for the _Times_ in five days: he has reported on food shortages, on victims of terrorism who have escaped, has traveled with a column of refugees, has managed to secure a senior source inside the regime who says documentation of chemical weaponry is currently being smuggled out of the country. It is stellar work, breathtaking, of incredible importance.

And all Satine can think is that she wishes Ben wouldn’t write quite so fast, for fear that any details not vetted out by his editors may give away his location.

She does her job, and she does it well. She hosts a public forum for the thinktank she had first worked for all those years ago, straight out of college, under the rotunda at Columbia and smiles the entire time. She makes a trip to San Francisco to visit a small but influential group of British tech investors and designers; she continues to shuttle quiet condemnations of Guantanamo Bay towards the White House. She still respects President Valorum, but the new Secretary of State makes her uneasy – he is a small, elderly man with a long record of being pro-business and possibly unscrupulous with it, and is very powerful indeed. She’s not sure why, but Palpatine frightens her – and, thankfully, she is not alone, as Bail mutters that he thinks him uncivilized, in the worst senses of the word.

After three full weeks, Satine is nearly happy again, though always recognizing the pall of hazy anxiety that hovers at the back of her mind. She wakes early – she rolls over into Bail, revels in the touch of his big hands on her skin, fucks down onto him as he sits upright in the middle of their bed, letting her hair catch sunshine as it tumbles down around him.

Her secretary meets her at the door to the Embassy – he is a big, portly man who’s fond of a homemade steak-and-kidney pie, and an excellent public servant, and right now, he looks very nervous indeed.

“What is it, Mr. Freeman?”

“Your morning meeting with the cultural attaché has been postponed,” he begins, weakly, and he trots quickly behind her as she moves past him, swipes her credentials, and puts her bag through the necessary metal detector. “Your Excellency, I must tell you – ”

“Is the attaché well? Why was it put off?”

“A personal emergency, I believe. We are working with his assistant to reschedule. Ambassador – Ambassador, you will see on the television in your office – ”

Satine is moments from rolling her eyes; this routine is well-established and harmless, but never not a little bit wearying. “Thank you, Mr. Freeman. I’m sure I will be up to speed soon enough. Is it just the eleven o’clock conference call with State, then?”

“Yes. Ma’am, I really think – ”

She opens her door with a flourish, tosses her purse onto her chair. Turns, peers at the screen in the corner; she staggers, she catches hold of the edge of her desk, she doesn’t notice the supporting, shaking hands of Mr. Freeman under her elbow.

“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” he’s saying. “The staff all know – I tried to – ”

God, it’s so typical. It’s not even extraordinary. She’s seen this so many times over the years – anyone with a TV, computer or even just with eyes to scan a stand full of newspapers, has seen this before. Nothing’s changed, not the black-clad fighters with AK-47s, not the featureless desert and clear blue sky, not the mocking orange jumpsuit of the unfortunate kneeling in the middle of them, black flags and banners snapping in the wind.

“Your Excellency,” Mr. Freeman is whispering. He’s put her office phone in her hands, is keeping a blinking call on hold. “The French ambassador – I thought perhaps – ”

So many secrets she hasn’t kept, but in this moment, she can’t be arsed to worry about it.

“Bail,” she wavers, keeping a tight a grip as she can on the phone. “Bail, turn on CNN.”

A small shuffle on the end of the line, a click – and she can hear the exact moment when he falls into his chair.

“ _Ah, mon dieu_ ,” he’s murmuring. “ _Non, non, c’est pas possible –_ ”

There must be only about five seconds of the video that the networks can broadcast without violating watershed laws, because it keeps looping. Again, and again, and again, all Satine can see is Ben looking up briefly, squinting against the sun, his beard grown ragged. Again and again, there is a small movement of his hands: manacled, they lift up towards his face, three fingers touch his lips.

She catches the kiss he blows a thousand times over. And then she picks her phone back up, and goes to work.

*

**TBC**

*


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _With apologies in advance if I've screwed up any of the honorifics!_

*

It takes Satine three hours to determine what happened. British intelligence is saying that the local convoy with which Ben was traveling near Mayadin – which lies smack dab in the middle of several crucial oil pipelines, which must be the story he was chasing – came under fire, was stopped, searched, and dispersed. No one knows anything about a photographer named Tano; in fact, when Satine asks the question, all she gets is flat surprise. They are still translating the demands stated in the video (they were behind the news networks on this one, god, when will it end), but are equally clear that, as ever, those demands will not officially be met.

She’s also hyper-aware of the fact – as her staff flitter in and out of her office, keep clearing her schedule hour by hour so she can concentrate on this, keeping the might of her position ticking over in the background – that they _know_. They know everything; even this nameless, faceless MI6 analyst who’s on the phone with her knows why she’s calling, why she cares when technically, as just the Ambassador to an ally which, if they get involved in this at all, will be communicating directly with the Prime Minister, she has no place asking these questions.

What gives her hope is that they have no business answering them, either. Which means they know, and they _understand_ , and that is a kindness that makes her want to weep.

Bail calls her around lunchtime to say, hurriedly, that he is exploring options for the French to be involved in some sort of communication carried through Lebanon – the French have, after all, frequently been the first in in these situations, always the ones the terrorists want to negotiate with, always the ones thought weak when that couldn’t be further from the truth. At 1 p.m., the Secretary of State calls, and as much as she mistrusts him Satine takes comfort in Palpatine’s murmured, oily assurances that the United States will do everything it can to assist the United Kingdom in the recovery of one of its citizens. He is in Geneva, shepherding the Iran nuclear deal through its final stages, and hangs up after thirty seconds.

At five p.m., Satine gets up, straightens her shirt and coat, checks her makeup and hair in her compact, and walks out to her car under her own power. Her protection detail deposits her at her apartment with whispered requests as to whether she needs anything; when she says no, they leave her alone (they leave the door unlocked, too, as though they’re worried they may need to burst in) to sit ramrod straight in the dark, staring at nothing.

Twenty-four hours later there is still no news, and Bail’s face is rigid and drawn as they have dinner together, their phones lying silent at their elbows. Satine feels as though time itself is slipping through her fingers like water, its only remnants what it leaves in the darkening circles under her eyes.

At eleven p.m. on that second day, her phone lights up with a call from her detail as she sits huddled on her sofa.

“ _Nothing to concern yourself with, ma’am,_ ” her lead agent says. “ _Just to inform you – we’ve stopped a photographer who attempted to enter your apartment a few minutes ago. She’s being escorted off the premises._ ”

Satine sits bolt upright. “She?”

“ _Yes, ma’am. She wouldn’t say which publication put her up to this stunt, but –_ ”

“What’s her name?”

There is a brief scuffle on the other end of the line, a yelp, and then a burst of rapid, undoubtedly furious shouting in what sounds like Korean.

“ _Tano, ma’am._ ”

She is indeed Korean, as it turns out – a little slip of a thing with an enormous scowl and white and blue beads woven into her thick French braid. She looks so small and young with the agents’ hands on her upper arms, but she’s still hanging on fiercely to her backpack and enormous camera, disheveled in her jean shorts, combat boots, and windbreaker.

“He _told_ me to come,” she says in a perfectly normal Midwestern accent as soon as Satine opens the door. “Fuck’s sake, I wasn’t coming here to do a fucking style photoshoot!”

“Come in,” Satine orders, and points for her staff to leave them alone, though they look dubious at the prospect. Tano nods angrily and does so, stomping and clattering, and instantly starts unloading her bag onto Satine’s dining table – by the time Satine’s turned back from shutting the door there is stack of envelopes scattered across its surface, Tano’s camera is in pieces, and a laptop – Ben’s laptop – is whirring into life.

“How did you get back?”

“Left on my Korean passport, came back in on my American one. Good thing they hadn’t quite flagged me yet, or they’d’ve taken my stuff,” Tano says quickly. She sits, starts typing, chewing on her lower lip. “I need to use your wifi. Don’t worry, it won’t be traced back to you – I’ll use a proxy – ”

Satine puts her hand on the laptop, closes it, stares right back when Ahsoka whirls to her and glares. “What are you going to do?” she asks, quietly.

Tano blinks. “I’ve got – ” She stops, takes a deep breath. “I’ve got them. The photos we wanted. Russian-made phosphorus bombs, specially modified to carry mustard and sarin. It’s all there. Serial numbers, records showing they were sold to Assad, spent casings.”

There are tears welling up in the corners of the girl’s eyes. “I’ve got to post them,” she says, brokenly. “B-Ben told me to – ”

“They’ll kill him,” Satine whispers. “Assad will find them and bomb them to kingdom come.”

“I _know_ ,” Tano wails, and with that, she throws herself into Satine’s arms and starts bawling.

Once Ahsoka has wept herself into an exhausted sleep in Satine’s bed, Satine calls Bail. By morning, they have spoken twice to the editors of _The New York Times_ and brokered a compromise that will give diplomacy three more days in which to try to negotiate a safe rescue before they lift an embargo on the photos.

It’s easy to see, during breakfast, why Ben took Tano with him. With her composure regained, if not her calm, she has an unnatural, powerful stillness to her as she reads carefully through pages of Ben’s handwritten notes. Satine has no doubt that she could defend herself to the death if need be, and the research she’s done on the girl overnight confirms her pedigree. She’s covered the Arab Spring from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, been arrested, been shot, been threatened. But looking at her across her kitchen, Satine can see just how she’s survived.

She, too, is running her hands through the materials Ben had left with Ahsoka before joining the convoy, tracing scrawled words as though he’s right there behind them. There are plenty of photographs, too, which Ahsoka allows her to look at – most are her own work, carefully composed and meticulously labeled, but there are some less formal ones. Of her, which Ben must have taken, riding in the back of an open pickup truck. Of him, grinning over a flap of his keffiyeh. Of families they’d met, who risked their lives for them. Of Ben looking down, grim-faced, at a body lying half-in, half-out of an open sewer, notebook in hand.

She has his passport, too – it’s stuffed with stamps and visa confirmations from every continent, each page thick with black ink. And in the back –

Satine frowns, tilts her head, thinks. “Ahsoka?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you think of any reason why Ben would list the Japanese Ambassador as his emergency contact?”

Ahsoka blinks and swallows a bite of her cereal. “He did? Hah. Pretentious asshole.”

“Well, he’s the Ambassador now, but before that he was retired, and before that – General Secretary of the UN,” Satine says slowly, drumming her fingers on the tabletop. “You’re alright to stay here?”

“Yeah. Why?”

Satine stops at the Embassy briefly so her protocol officer can refresh her mind on the finer points of Japanese etiquette, and arrives at the Consulate on Lexington just before noon. The Ambassador is waiting for her, a wizened, miniscule old man who accepts her bow with a kindly smile and an offer of tea which, from her cupped hands, warms her right down into her chest.

“I have a strange question to put to you, Yoda-sama,” she begins.

“Hmm,” he says, nodding. “Know what you would ask, I do. Your friend, young Kenobi is.”

“Yes, o-sama.”

“Always reckless, he was,” the Ambassador chuckles. “Warned him, I have, that one day it would – what is the phrase – catch up to him.”

“Sir, I – ”

“Came to Japan once, he did,” Yoda interrupts, gently. “Asked him to write a history of the Japanese army in wartime, my government did. To use his good name for their nationalist cause, they wanted.”

Yoda’s smile is sad and deep. “The wrong man, they chose.”

Satine sits very still, considering. “He explicitly contradicted your government’s position on Second World War atrocities, o-sama?”

“Indeed.”

“Then why – ”

“Because _right,_ he was!” Yoda barks, tapping the end of his cane sharply against the floor. It’s not hard to see, suddenly, how he ran the United Nations for so long. “Grave crimes were committed. Wrote that, he did. Brave, he was. And _right_.”

They sit in silence for a long moment before Yoda sighs, and taps his cane a few more times, this time speculatively. “Speak to the Chinese, I will,” he says. “And then speak to the Russians, _they_ will. And the Russians – well,” he says, more wryly, his thick white eyebrows twitching. “The Russians, if satisfied they are, will know to whom they should speak.”

Relief floods so fast through Satine’s muscles that it leaves her feeling as though she will not be able to stand up, but stand up she does – she bows, her hands folded in front of her, straightens, takes a deep breath. “Thank you. Thank you for trying.”

“Try, I do not. Go,” Yoda grumbles good-naturedly, waving a claw-like hand at her as he stumps across his office towards his desk. “Stay by your phone, you should.”

And so she waits. Ahsoka waits, snapping gum while she lies on her stomach on Satine’s carpet and flicks quickly through news and sports channels, settling on a station that shows classic movies which she watches for hours and hours on end. Bail waits, checking in with Satine every few hours; she knows he doesn’t want to see her for her own sake, because he’s a mess, because he doesn’t want to be seen like that, because he’s calling his wife just to have someone to talk to who can be sensibly distant about it all.

Satine is at the Embassy, finishing reading a report on British involvement in UNESCO in the mid-afternoon of the last day before the embargo is lifted, when her personal mobile rings.

“Hello?”

“ _Satine?_ ”

She drops the report, folds forward onto her desk, pants out one choked, strangled cry, clutching her fingers into her hair. “Ben?”

“ _Yes. I landed at Fort Meade six hours ago, just finished debriefing._ ”

She sniffs back her tears, waves a hand distractedly at the aide who has looked around the doorway to see if she’s alright. “Are you hurt?”

“ _No_.”

“Ben – ”

“ _No, Satine. I’m alright._ ”

“Good. Good – that’s good – ”

“ _Hey_ ,” he says, softer. “ _I hear there are cameras starting to camp out at my flat. Can I –_ ”

“Yes,” she says, nodding at nothing. “Yes, of course, come to mine, I’ll – I’ll get someone to get you some things.”

“ _Thank you. I’ll be there soon_.”

After he hangs up, Satine texts Bail, not trusting her voice. It’s 2 p.m., and she’s due in a meeting on test ban treaty language that is likely to last until late. When she finally exits her office, she sees Mr. Freeman beaming happily at his desk, his bald, jowly head shining.

The meeting does indeed keep her late, and by the time she’s running out to her car it is past ten. Her steps falter as she reaches her door, and she finds only darkness beyond – the television is still on, projecting _Some Like It Hot_ across the living room, and in its light, she can see Ben sitting on the couch, his head tipped over the back of it, his eyes closed. Ahsoka is lying across him with her head in his lap, her fingers clenched into his pantleg even in sleep.

He stirs and looks towards Satine as she steps quietly in through the door and closes it behind her; while she undoes her coat, fumbling with the buttons, he stands carefully, scoops up a mumbling Ahsoka, carries her into the spare bedroom that Satine has never used. Satine paces a little, unable to stop herself; she turns off the TV, turns on a light, and waits.

He doesn’t look quite right, when he comes back out, his hands in his pockets. He looks thin, shrunken inside his clothes – clothes which aren’t his, because they clearly don’t fit – though he must have had time to clean up at some point, because he’s mown down his beard from the mess it was when she last saw it, and his hair has been washed.

She can see bruises at his collar, at his wrists, spreading across his temples.

“Hello,” he says.

“Fuck you,” she sobs, and gathers him in. He tilts his face into her neck and just breathes.

Sometime in the night, she half-wakes to find that Bail has joined them. She reaches out across Ben, drapes an arm around Bail’s hip, and falls back to sleep.

*

**TBC**

*


	7. Chapter 7

*

They don’t know quite what to do with themselves in the first few days after Ben gets back. Bail cooks, which is a nightmarish production of noise, steam, and smoke which nevertheless produces excellent results, and Ben eats it all, absentmindedly, as though he doesn’t care that he’d lost a fifth of his body weight in a week. They sleep together, plastered skin to skin, but Satine and Bail both know it can’t be anything more than that, not yet. After three days, once her photos have been published by the _Times,_ Ahsoka disappears from the spare room, leaving Satine a note briefly thanking her for her hospitality that is written in neat block capitals. 

The only thing that really happens is that Ben writes. He writes during the day when Satine and Bail are both gone; he writes at dinner, he writes at breakfast, he writes in the middle of the night when he apparently thinks they won’t notice him getting out of bed.  

On the fourth night, when Ben is up and about and Bail is definitely still asleep, Satine slips out from under the covers, pulls a robe around her shoulders, and goes out into the living room to find Ben sitting at the wall-to-floor windows, looking out over the City, a cup of tea in his hands and his laptop sitting abandoned by his side. 

“Hey,” she says, as she settles down next to him. He’s starting to look better, now, more filled-out, though not less tired. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” 

He doesn’t reply for a long moment, but he does reach over to interlock her fingers with his.  

“I never used to think I was important,” he says finally. “I’d always thought it was only the work that mattered. I’m a mouthpiece, a megaphone. It didn’t matter who wrote the damn article, it’s what was in it.” 

Satine looks over at his screen, at the lines and pages of neat text. “Are you writing about this for the _Times_?” 

“They want it. The _New Yorker_ wants it, too, but I’m finding myself unwilling to subject myself to either of their style guidelines,” he says, shaking his head, still looking out over the lights of FiDi. “But if I turn it into a book instead, then it’s about me. And I never wanted that. 

“Do you remember,” he continues suddenly, squeezing her hand, “a story about a journalist who disappeared in Egypt, three years ago?” 

Satine thinks. “I do. He was American? The Egyptian Army produced a body and said it was an act of homicide during a protest.” 

“Yes. Quite a coincidence, considering he’d been looking into their torture prisons.” Ben’s smile is twisted, bitter. “His name was Anakin. He’s the one Ahsoka first started working with.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“He had a wife and two children. Twins. And I wasn’t there because I was in jail in Eritrea.” 

“Ben – ” 

“I’d never understood,” he says, his breath hitching. He still won’t look at her, and so Satine kneels upright, presses herself to his back, wraps her arms around him and just holds on. “I’d never wanted _anything_ so much as I wanted to get out of that hellhole alive and come back to – ” 

“Shh,” she says, and he breaks off just as she knows he needed to, lowering his head, pressing it into her elbow. “I know. I know. It’s alright…” 

He falls asleep curled up on the sofa, and is still there, dead to the world, when Bail wakes hours later. He’s still there when they both get back from a fairly long day at work, too, and when they wake him he is groggy and barely coherent as he stumbles off to the shower – but Bail is smiling, now, and Satine knows she is too, and when Ben pads back out of the bathroom he kisses them both on the cheek before he sits down to eat.  

Two weeks later, the midterm elections produce a sweeping change in government. The President is suddenly weakened – there are hawks newly-placed on every committee that matters, and resignations seethe through the diplomatic corps so fast it leaves observers breathless. The long and short of it is that Secretary of State Palpatine wants Satine and Bail (and many others) out, and new people in. And so, to their astonishment, but not quite to their regret, they go.  

Bail will miss the house on Gramercy, but he covers his disappointment by saying that he has at least left it in good condition for the next Ambassador. Satine, to her surprise, finds that that perhaps for the first time, she will miss her sterile, black-and-white home. Ben just grins at them both, not unkindly, and says that he’d be willing to repaint his walls if they are inclined to ask – but that, first, he intends to kidnap them away to a cabin he knows upstate for at least a week after they leave their posts. 

“Kidnap?” Bail says, raising an eyebrow, and Ben kisses him in apology, long and tender. 

“Something like that. One of you gets to ride on the back of my bike.” 

Bail splutters. “Your _what?_ ” 

Ben turns to Satine. “Well, I suppose that’s settled, then.” 

The ride is beautiful, full of trees and lakes whizzing past as Satine clings to Ben’s waist, her helmeted head on his shoulder. 

“Bail’s having kittens back there,” she shouts at one point, not needing to gesture back to where the former French ambassador is cautiously following them in a restored Peugeot convertible. If she listens hard enough over the roar of the motorcycle, she’s fairly sure she can hear him swearing at them in French at the top of his lungs. 

“He’ll live,” Ben laughs, and revs the bike into a higher gear.  

It’s dark enough when they arrive that they can’t see the lake which Satine can hear down at the bottom of the garden, but she doesn’t need that tonight. She just needs this: she needs lying full-length on top of Ben on one of the leather sofas, slowly kissing him until he’s flushed and bright-eyed, playing with her hair, leaving tortuous bites down her neck. Bail sits and watches them, working his way through an excellent bottle of Merlot, before coming to join them; Satine sits Ben up, watches him sigh into Bail’s mouth.  

This is all she needs: Ben, reduced to an incoherent, disheveled mess, divested of most (but not all) of his clothes, following them hungrily to the bedroom, which she is carried into by Bail. The two of them slowly filling her up, groaning their love for her into her skin, kissing over her shoulder. She comes fast, and then comes again, and whimpers, encircled tight in Ben’s arms, as he is fucked by Bail, who has whispered words tumbling out of him in so many languages that she loses count within minutes.  

Bail has Ben’s jaw in his hand, is trading kisses between him and Satine as she clutches at Bail’s back. “God,” Ben groans, and it’s like he loses complete control of his muscles, screaming Bail’s name even as he crushes Satine to him. 

“Mes chères,” Bail pants, and when he comes he’s already enfolding them, planning his hands across them, calm and worshipful.  

“Well,” Ben says, when he’s recovered enough for speech. “That sets us up well for tomorrow.” 

“What’s tomorrow?” Bail mumbles. 

“Round two.” 

Bail groans; Satine swats him, and Ben just laughs. 

And that’s all Satine needs.

*

**FIN**

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand that's your lot! Thanks for sticking with this weirdness, and for your awesome comments :-)


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